The Meeting of James and Lance

Written by alias April Potter, during Grade 10 computer programming class. I promise we finished the day’s coding assignments. Posted on Snowbun with her permission.

Lance Tymera looked around at the other students in the field. Some of them were looking back at him and whispering behind their hands with their friends. Lance just raised an eyebrow at them, and looked away. Most of the others were involved in their own games and just ignored him, so he decided to walk around a bit, if only to get away from the stares.

He seemed more mature than a typical 8th grader. He was at the taller end of the scale at about 5’6″. He had hazel eyes and hair and was wearing a pair of tan pants and a t-shirt that was almost the same colour as his hair and eyes.

As he walked through the playground, he noticed that there seemed to be someone (or someones) with elements there.

No, it’s impossible, he thought. Nobody here should know about it.

Just then, a boy on the other side of the field started walking towards Lance with a determined look in his eyes. When he saw that Lance had noticed him, he smiled and started walking faster. By the time the boy had reached Lance he had broken into a run. When he got there he jumped on him and glomped (tackle-hugged) him. Lance was incredibly surprised by this, so of course he lost his balance and fell over, with the boy landing on top of him. With that, the boy started laughing. Lance just stared at him, unable to speak (partly because the boy was sitting on his chest). When the boy managed to calm down, he finally said something.

“I knew you were an elemental the first time I saw you! Do you know what element you are? Oh well, it doesn’t matter! Wait until you meet the others!”

The boy said all this so fast Lance barely had time to process what he was saying, let alone respond. But that last remark demanded an explanation.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Um, do you think you could get off of me? I want to ask you some questions, but it’s a little hard to do that in this position.”

“Oh, sorry!” the boy said as he scrambled off of him, still smiling widely.

As soon as Lance was standing up again, he asked the boy, “First of all, what’s your name?”

“Oh, I’m James Palen,” he said, extending his hand to shake Lance’s, which seemed rather unnecessary to Lance, but he shook it anyway. “What’s yours?”

“Lance Tymera. Now, I want to ask you a couple of questions. First of all, how do you know about elements, and that I have one?”

“Well, I have an element too. Mine’s Water. That means I can sense them in others as well. Do you know what yours is?”

“My element’s Lightning. What did you mean when you said ‘the others’? Are there more elementals at this school?”

“Of course! What did you think? There’s Kikanah, Cameron, Marie, Christianna, Danielle, and there used to be Thomas, but he moved. Then of course there’s my kid sister, but she’s too young to go here.”

Lance just stared at him. Seven whole elementals, plus…what was his name again? James? And they all knew each other? Lance felt a slight hope start to build in his chest. Maybe one of them was a Sole Sphere of Darkness. Maybe he would finally find her again, after centuries of searching.

James was talking again. “Do you want to meet them? Come on,” grabbing Lance’s arm, “I’ll take you to them.”

James started dragging Lance back across the field. As they walked, Lance had a chance to look at James. He was tall, taller than Lance, and he had dirty blond hair and blue-grey eyes. It seemed that he had many strange habits, or maybe he was just plain strange. They were approaching two girls from behind. James released Lance’s arm, made a sign for him to be quiet and stay where he was, and then he tiptoed up behind one of the girls and then jumped around in front of her. She jumped about three feet in the air, and then started yelling at James for scaring her like that. Something about her seemed very familiar to Lance.